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Snider Lindsey ENG 101: Appalachian Research Essay

Hell's Not Far Off

A biography of Bruce Crawford, a southwest Virginia journalist-writer of the radical tradition and one of the first to interpret Appalachian labor history. Hell's Not Far Off is a grounded, politically engaged study of the Appalachian journalist and political critic Bruce Crawford, a scourge of coal and railway interests. Crawford fought injustices wherever he saw them at major risk to his own life and became an early interpreter of Appalachian labor history. His writings and actions from the 1920s to the 1960s helped shape southwest Virginia and West Virginia. Through Crawford's Weekly, a newspaper active from 1920 to 1935, Crawford challenged the Ku Klux Klan, lynch mobs, and the private police forces of coal barons.

Deviant Hollers

Deviant Hollers: Queering Appalachian Ecologies for a Sustainable Future uses the lens of queer ecologies to explore environmental destruction in Appalachia while mapping out alternative futures that follow from critical queer perspectives on the United States' exploitation of the land. With essays by Lis Regula, Jessica Cory, Chet Pancake, Tijah Bumgarner, MJ Eckhouse, and other essential thinkers, this collection brings to light both emergent and long-standing marginalized perspectives that give renewed energy to the struggle for a sustainable future. A new and valuable contribution to the field of Appalachian studies, rural queer studies, Indigenous studies, and ethnographic studies of the United States, Deviant Hollers presents a much-needed objection to the status quo of academic work, as well as to the American exceptionalism and white supremacy pervading US politics and the broader geopolitical climate.

Something in These Hills

What is the "something in these hills" that ties mountain families to family land in the southern Appalachians? This ethnographic examination challenges contemporary theory and explores two interrelated themes: the duality of the southern Appalachians as both a menacing and majestic landscape and the emotional relationship to family land characteristic of long-term residents of these mountains. To most outsiders, the area conjures images of a beautiful yet dangerous place, typified by the movie Deliverance. To long-term residents, these mountains have a fundamental emotional hold so powerful that many mourn the sale or loss of family land as if it were a deceased relative. How can the same geographical space be both? Using a carefully crafted cultural lens, John M. Coggeshall explains how family land anthropomorphizes, metaphorically becoming another member of kin groups. He establishes that this emotional sense of place existed prior to recent land losses, contrary to some contemporary scholars. Utilizing the voices and perspectives of long-term residents, the book provides readers with a more fundamental understanding of the "something in these hills" that holds people in place.

A Union for Appalachian Healthcare Workers

History at the intersection of healthcare, labor, and civil rights. The union of hospital workers usually referred to as the 1199 sits at the intersection of three of the most important topics in US history: organized labor, health care, and civil rights. John Hennen's book explores the union's history in Appalachia, a region that is generally associated with extractive industries but has seen health care grow as a share of the overall economy. With a multiracial, largely female, and notably militant membership, 1199 was at labor's vanguard in the 1970s, and Hennen traces its efforts in hospitals, nursing homes, and healthcare centers in West Virginia, eastern Kentucky, and Appalachian Ohio. He places these stories of mainly low-wage women workers within the framework of shake-ups in the late industrial and early postindustrial United States, relying in part on the words of Local 1199 workers and organizers themselves. Both a sophisticated account of an overlooked aspect of Appalachia's labor history and a key piece of context for Americans' current concern with the status of "essential workers," Hennen's book is a timely contribution to the fields of history and Appalachian studies and to the study of social movements.

Stringbean

The artist's impact on country music and how his death changed the genre A beloved member of the country music community, David "Stringbean" Akeman found nationwide fame as a cast member of Hee Haw. The 1973 murder of Stringbean and his wife forever changed Nashville's sense of itself. Millions of others mourned not only the slain couple but the passing of the way of life that country music had long represented. Taylor Hagood merges the story of Stringbean's life with an account of murder and courtroom drama. Hagood delves into the unexpected questions and uneasy resolutions raised by the atmosphere of retribution surrounding the murder trial and recounts the redemption story that followed decades later.

Research Websites

What types of social issues?

Water quality in Appalachia
Obesity
Food deserts
Black lung disease
Deforestation/strip mining
Outmigration

Economic development (or lack of)

Grab a Definition

An animated GIF of a search for Black Lung Disease in Britannica Academic.

Create a Boolean Search

An animated gif of a search for strip mining AND west virginia in the Primo resources catalog.

 

An animated gif of a search in EBSCO Academic Search Complete for water AND Appalachia.

 

 

Great Searches:

  • start generally, but eventually aim for the specific

  • focus on a subtopic

  • create pathways to point you toward another result

Do's and Don'ts

  1. Formulate a Great Thesis
    • specific
    • understandable
  2. Find Resources[a pixel library representation]
  3. Read Resources, then Stop/ Search Again / Use & Read Sources for Note Taking - How do you want to use this resource?
  4. Write Your Draft Out of Order
    • write your support paragraphs FIRST
    • write the introduction and conclusion LAST 
  • copy and paste, copy and paste, copy and paste [a pixel clown representation]
  • cite anything in the opening sentence of any paragraph
  • summarize a lot, give a lot of unrelated facts and ideas

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